A Knife Thin Line
by Niobe's Pen
Summary: "Sometimes it feels I am walking on a knife-thin line between sanity and its less admirable cousin. And with every step, the blade cuts deeper until one day, I won't be able to resist." Rated T but subject to change. Caution: multiple character deaths.
1. Chapter 1

**AN:** Well I'm sorta pissed coz I already WROTE a friggin AN, but it didn't save. Grrr. And neither did my page breaks. Grr. So this is my story, chapter one of my story. It starts out pretty funny, bbut let me tell you, the humor's gonna get real dark real fast. Mwaha. This is the first story I'm publishing on this site, so please give feedback.

**Disclaimer: I do not own Generator Rex and am not using this story for moolah, so you can't sue me. Um... I think.**

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**A Knife-thin Line**

Chapter One: Breifing

One of the worst days of my life started out on the best morning possible. I woke slowly, sliding from my chaotic dream and into the cool white of morning. My eyes flicked open and I was staring at the ceiling, the dirty white ceiling with that ruptured crack across it where Bobo had walloped it with a green plastic baseball bat. The sheets on the hard bed were rumpled and sorta smelly, but cool. Soft light slipped in through the slits in the fake wood blinds.

A beautiful day! I threw off those thin dirty sheets and vaulted from the bed onto the freezing concrete floor. In a few steps I was at the the (locked and barred) window. After a brief struggle, the cheap blinds clattered open. I sighed and leaned forward, just gazing out into the beautifully barren explosives range.

And it was there, leaning shirtless with my cheek pressed to the glass, that I realized the reason this morning was so utterly perfect was I had slept through the four AM briefing session.

And it only went downhill from there.

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The talking man kept talking when the doors to the briefing room slid open. He didn't even acknowledge my entrance. Blah de blah-blah. I wondered if he ever stopped talking. I had never seen him without his mouth opening and closing like a fish without water. Then again, I had never really paid attention to him, even when I was at the briefing sessions. Dr Holiday and Agent Six were in their normal places, Six bent over the stone counter in a hard plastic office chair with a notepad, Holiday a standing couple steps behind. Bobo was sitting in my vacated place and for an absurd moment I wondered if I had been replaced. Everybody (besides Talking Man) turned to stare at me upon entrance.

I didn't know what else to do, so I waved.

Dr. Holiday sighed and put her clipboard down on the counter with a soft click. Hearing the click, Talking Man stopped talking and turned to see what was going on. I can make a grand entrance and he'll just talk over me, but when Holiday puts her clipboard down, it's business.

"Good to see you, Rex," Six said. One eyebrow rose above his tinted shades.

"Uh… sorry I'm late?" My voice came out cracked and uncertain. I winced.

Holiday sighed (again) and crossed her arms. Her features were carefully arranged to convey annoyance. "These briefing sessions are important, you know."

"I slept in."

"If you don't think these sessions are important, that's your opinion. But not showing up late puts us all at an inconvenience," Six said. "Sit down. Maybe you can pick something up in the last ten minutes."

"The monkey's in my chair."

"You can sit in the monkey's chair."

"The monkey gets front row seats because the good-for-nothing secret agent likes to sleep," said the monkey (gleefully).

"Yes, Bobo, you've mentioned this," Holiday muttered, and picked up her clipboard. Talking Man started talking again and pointing at some complicated looking mathematical symbols. I wondered if even Six knew his name. But at least now I knew he sometimes stopped talking.

I confess, I didn't understand a thing in the rest of the session. Six is sorta mad and Holiday is acting like she's mad, but I think she doesn't mind. I guess I'll just have to wing it.

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"Why don't I ever get to drive the spaceship thingy?"

"Because you'd crash it," the man in the suit said, without looking up.

"But I can CONTROL machines!" I cried. Why was life so unfair? I tuned out Pilot Suit Man's explanation and gazed out at the scenery crawling below us. Ooo. We're in the dessert. The sand was a rusty reddish color and rippled out forever, only broken by the bleached scattered rocks and the dry twisting cacti. Far off in the distance, a mirage glimmered, sending poisoned lies of cool water and shade. Maybe it was a good idea to not let me drive, because I probably would crash it and then we'd all die of overexposure.

"And THAT'S why you can't drive," Pilot Suit Man finished.

I looked at his unremarkable face and hissed, "Lies…". He started to say something else, but I walked away.

I tramped across the the gritty concrete floors. I would go find a mini-fridge and get a soda. Mmm. Soda. I loved soda. But before I could get halfway across the cavernous pilot room, I felt something grip my upper arm.

"I don wanna talk to you…" I bawled. Couldn't the stupid pilot just leave me alone? I already knew he wouldn't let me drive.

"You have to. Where have you been? We're landing in ten minutes. Get in position," Six said.

"Oh, it's you… "

Six frowned, but decided not to comment. "Prepare for landing."

"Okay, getting into position," I said, and kept walking.

"That's not your position."

I didn't say anything and kept walking. At the end of the wide circular room was a door that didn't match the res of the room. The rest of the room was a clean white color. This door was a dirty gray. Broad red and orange lines were painted onto its surface. Oh, and a scuffed metal sign: emergency door. Alarm will sound. I think it was originally put there so that the pilot could take a flying leap (hopefully with parachute) were the engine to malfunction. But in my eyes, it only has one use. How boring these poor people's live would be without me…

"Rex, don't…" Six called (halfheartedly).

"See you at the bottom!" and I pulled my goggles on and shoved the door open. Immediately, sirens wailed and red lights danced merrily on the paneled walls. Pilot Suit Man screamed like a little girl, and Holiday's boots come clicking across the floor. "What, again?" I heard her say, and then I was slapping my goggles on and dramatically swan-diving down and out with a Tarzan yell. Except I don't know what Tarzan sounded like, it's a really old movie, so I just screamed at the top of my lungs. Then a bug flew into my mouth, so I stopped. I loved falling. The air whisked through my gelled black hair. Bits of sand stung my face and lips, bouncing off my goggles. There sure was a lot of grit in the air. And then my wings crumpled out, angling to slow my descent.

My boots thudded into the sand. Gosh, it was lonely down here, even more barren then from the sky. And it was hot. The sun glared down in the burning white sky. The air was completely dry and dust-filled. I looked around. Nothing. There was nothing here. Maybe I would have know what was happening if I had been to the stupid briefing session. Then dust began to stir up, whirling around me and obscuring my vision. I couldn't breath and began to cough, trying to clear my airways. I could feel the sand all over me. Then there was a thump and the ground shook. The air began to clear. The ship hath landed. I heard some shouting about sprinkles and wondered if I'd set them off. I still couldn't see.

And then I felt a slow, creeping dread in my gut. I could almost feel something out there, watching. And suddenly I didn't want to see what had been uncovered in the dust storm.

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**AN: **I would have written more, but I kinda felt that writing too long would kinda crowd my writing, so I'm just posting what I have so far and not the super-awesome twist I was gonna pull. That'll have to come at the end of next chapter, and I'm not telling what it is. Suckers.

And this is where I beg for reviews. What did you think? Funny? Not funny? Too many adverbs? Not long enough? Too much description? Clunky prose? Huh?

And that's it for today. Thank you for reading, please come back sometime, will update within two weeks (going on vacation, may not have time)

Now, let's see if it saves this time...


	2. Chapter 2

**AN: Chapter two's done, in case you haven't realized yet. Yeah, it took me long enough. I like this chapter better. The dialogue is less stunted. Maybe because there's less of it and more explosions, but... I like explosions better anyway. The chapter's a little longer too, but I still didn't include the next scene I was going to. **

**Bad writer.**

**Thanks for reading, reviewing, and all that happy crappy!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything in this chapter.**

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**Chapter 2**

The haze of sand swirled to clarity. To my surprise, everything looked normal. A little flatter. But normal. Guess I was wrong.

Then, the ground in front of me seemed to explode. The red soil rushed past me. I staggered back in shock, and then I saw a pulsating, glistening expanse begin to move. The heck? I blinked, stepped back again to get a better picture. It looked like a massive booger. A massive silver booger with deformed head-like lumps and twisting appendages. It had no shape to speak of, or no logical on at least, the size of a football field.

It had been in the middle of the desert, buried under all the dry sand. How was it wet? Perhaps more importantly, what were we supposed to do with it? Heal it? Fight it?

"What are you waiting for?" Six asked, behind me.

"Well, I don't understand what I'm supposed to do with a large booger-like glob in the middle of the desert." I turned to look at him. "Y'know?" His face was impassive. Then he sighed.

"We're supposed to cure it and take it back."

"…Thanks. What does the thing do, though?," I asked.

Six's frown deepened. "Why do you think there's a desert here?"

…oh. Duh.

"Try not to touch it until we have it distracted enough so it doesn't suck you dry." He motioned to a bunch of soldiers that had walked up while we were talking. They appeared to be armed with squirt guns. I opened my mouth to ask, but Six cut me off. "We're on a budget." Then he whipped his swords out and ran at the booger. The squirt gun brigade followed, plastic firearms at ready. I jogged along behind, stopping several feet away from the thing.

Six was already out in front, slashing around. The soldiers whipped out their squirt guns and started squirting, completely dousing it with water. It couldn't absorb all of it at once. Still, the little streams of water seemed insignificant compared to the size of the thing. Water dripped onto the rippled sand around the evo. The now-wet sand was the color of blood. An odd feeling crept up my neck, enough to make me pause.

Then Six hit one of the appendage things. More than that, he completely lopped it off, and it fell to the ground still. The arm-like things (which had been the length of a, well, arm before) snapped around wildly, growing to around ten feet. Six jumped back to avoid being whacked. The soldiers shouted in shock. I'm guessing this wasn't in the briefing.

In any case, now it was distracted enough for me to try to heal. There really couldn't be a better time. Other then, like, never. I jogged around to the other side of the slimy silver shapeless monstrosity. On the other side, the arms were still their original length and not waving quite so fast. I could feel the air closer to the delectably drizzled thing, it was dry, unnaturally dry.

I closed the distance and put my hand on it.

It didn't notice me. I could feel it's few brain cells focused on the water guns and the pretty flashing swords. I could feel the nanites swirling around. For a second, I was sure I could cure it and we could just walk away. Then everything went wrong…

My skin was tightening, it seemed. My lips cracked, my mouth went dry, It felt like clay had been rubbed into my eyes. Mouth gaping, I tried to step back, but my hand was stuck. All over my body my skin was cracking, in my head disjointed images and unfinished thoughts circled. They weren't mine. I could feel the evo, and it wasn't nearly so impotent as I'd thought.

I must've been screaming, but I couldn't hear it. Then came a loosening, a ripping sensation, and my hand came off with some loud sound I couldn't hear, but vibrated inside me as my feet clambered back. I was out of reach in a couple staggering steps. I stumbled and fell backwards. There was a sudden light in my skull, and everything went all white and floaty.

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My head hurt. It was as if an angry little man was trapped in my skull and wanted to get out. I opened my eyes and everything slowly came back into focus. Sand? Sky? Shouting? What?

… oh crap.

I sat up, ignoring the pretty twinkling lights erupting across my vision. I was still in the desert, the booger evo was still there. Crap. The only difference in the pretty picture was the black and white suited bodies strewn across the nice sand, now blood-red from the water guns. The remaining troops were shouting at each other various forms of "Retreat!" and "Fall back!" and all that happy crappy. A green-clad body lay a couple feet away.

Six? He had been knocked out too?

I crawled over to where he lay. He was face-down, spread-eagle, his sunglasses lying in the san beside them. A single crack ran down the green surface of one lens.

"Six?" I asked. My voice was hoarse, and I felt a twinge of pain in my sore throat when I spoke. "Dude, you dead or something?" I whacked him a couple times in the shoulder. No response. So I seized his arm and rolled him over.

His skin was blackened and stretched over his leering skull. His lips had collapsed, showing his still-white teeth. His eyes were open and staring manically. Now I could feel how frail his arm was under his green blazer. An insane thought crossed my mind: this may be the first time he's ever smiled at me. This thought was followed by another: I think he might be dead…

I pulled myself back and clasped my hands over my eyes. Hear no evil, see no evil. If I can't see you you can't see me… oh God oh God oh…

A something grabbed my jacket.

"Hey, come one, we have to go, didn't you hear us? Fall back!"

_If I can't see you you can't see me If I can't see you you can't see me…_

"Damn it. Let's move, kid, do you want to look like him?" Suddenly I was being half carried, half dragged across the sand. I threw up on the nice soldier and earned a slap and several creative cusswords.

I suddenly realized that even though Six's eyes had been open, I couldn't bring myself to remember their color.

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Time passed.

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Next thing I knew, I was slamming into a lightly slimed tiled surface. A pair of high heeled shiny black shoes were a couple of inches away.

"Hey! Don't just drop him, be careful!" I heard a familiar female voice shout.

"Sorry," said a voice that really didn't sound at all sorry.

The shoes swam back into focus. Hmm. I followed them up a little ways. They weren't just shoes, they were boots. I felt proud of my poor concussed brain.

"Rex. Can you hear me?" The voice said again. Holiday's.

"I don't think so…"

Hands seized my face, pulling it up. Holiday's face floated above me, her pale skin contrasting her dark eyebrows, now pulled together, concerned. She pulled a flashlight out of her pocket and white searing light stabbed at my watering eye. Then it went away and my head back down on the ground, causing another barrage of spots.

So much for "don't drop him".

"Where's Six?" Holiday asked, straightening up. A chunk of glossy black hair fell loose from her bun, sticking to her lipstick. She didn't brush it away.

"Dead," the anonymously dressed soldier said, as if discussing plans for lunch.

"What!"

A low humming noise, and the floor began to vibrate. The ship was taking off. The noise intensified until I couldn't make out the conversation Holiday and the dude were having. Numbly, I sat up. Holiday didn't notice. I slowly pulled myself up to my feet, holding my head as if it was an armed bomb. The control room was in disarray, people teeming about and blabbering meaninglessly to each other. Everything was a little wet, for some reason. Oh, it was the sprinklers. My earlier stunt seemed several lifetimes away. I guess it was, considering all the people who dies in the time elapsed.

The red ground was growing smaller as the ship gained altitued. The evo was just a silvery speck surrounded by the wet patch of sand. It seemed a shard of bone poking from a bleeding wound. For a second I fancied I saw a speck of green in the blood-red mud.

Then a massive boom broke through the hum of the engines. People stopped what they were doing to stare at the mushroom of fire rising from where the evo once was. Glowing orange, shot through with flickering veins of red, sooty black at the top. It blossomed, then disappeared to a wisp of smoke in the strangely clear air. The hum seemed silent without all the people talking over it. In the rolling sea of red, an ugly scar stood out, just a memory of the people who had just died minutes ago.

What a blasphemously beautiful cremation.

He was dead. Holy crap, he was GONE, just like that. My instincts told me it wasn't real. There must be some chance, I thought. How could somebody just die all of a sudden? It didn't work that way. Couldn't.

I sank to my knees and covered my eyes.

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**THE END! Okay, I think I got all the typos, but we'll see. Excuse me a sec, I need to gloat...**

**I KILLED SIX! SIX PUSHES ALL PLOT! WHATEVER WILL HAPPEN NOW? MWAHAHA!**

**No, seriously. Have any of you notices how Six is the backbone of the plot? I really just wanted to play around with what would happen if he died.**

**I'll try to update sooner. The next chapter, the real fun begins. Please review.**


	3. Chapter 3

**AN: Done. Not quite sure what to think of this one... oh well. It kinda went down a lot differently then I expected. Much more dramatic. It was like the plot was developing itself while I wrote. Wierd.**

**On a different note, thanks bunches for all the reviews, you guys brighten my day... I'm somewhat suprised by the amount of people demanding for me to make Six an evo. LOL.**

**Also, if I haven't posted a chapter for a while or want to know what the progress is, check my profile. I write entries about what's going on and when I'll update, also some hints and stuff.**

**...I think some of you won't like this chapter, but still, ENJOY!**

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Chapter 3

It had been three days. Felt like weeks. Nobody had bothered giving me an assignment, nobody would even make eye contact with me in the halls anymore. If you could walk from one end of a building to another without interacting with another human, the hallways were too wide. Holiday had at least always been there to talk before, but suddenly she was distant, lost in her own head. She confessed that she was reconsidering staying with Providence, evo sister or no. I guess I'd be too, but I didn't have a life outside those stupid disinfected walls.

I flicked my eyes open and let the world in. Same ceiling with the crack in it, same light from the window. A different boy in the middle of all the familiar surroundings. I suddenly realized the music had stopped blaring from my headphones and there was no escape from my own echoing thoughts. But I didn't want to turn my music back on. The silence enchanted me, the silent clamor of the grave.

The grave...

I pushed my dirty black hair out of my eyes. The day after, we had all gotten onto a armored van and traveled out to Providence's cemetery. It had been a huge flat piece of land, stretching out forever. There was no dirt, just soil. Every few feet there was a nondescript steel plaque, a plaque more suited to being placed below a cherry tree, rather than above the last remains of a war victim. There had been millions of plaques, each with a first initial and a last name and nothing more. We traveled through the sea of graves on a golf cart, not saying anything, all dressed in our regular clothes.

The only flower we had seen was a single red rose lying beside the plaque of A. Roberts. It had been crushed beneath the wheels of our cart, without so much as a reaction from the driver. There wasn't a distinct pathway, so we frequently ran over the dead 's markers. Holiday flinched every time.

Finally we had came upon a freshly dug grave. Just a very shallow ditch, a cylindrical steel casket inside, a pile of dirt beside it, and a newly inscribed name: S. Green. The cart stopped. I realized this was Six's grave. S. Green? Had that been his name? I shook myself and climbed out. White had shown his face via technology and said some words that even he didn't find meaningful. Nobody had cried. Then the device was flipped off and an awkward silence followed. Until a workman showed up and filled in the grave before our eyes.

Then the door to my room burst open, the crash muffled be my headphones. I yanked them out and sat up.

The man in the doorway was short and plump, clad in a magenta suit, a floral dress shirt, and a school-bus-yellow tie. His small, watery eyes were unremarkable. He looked around the room and I felt myself instinctively shrinking back so that the strangely dressed man would perhaps mistake me for the wall. No such luck. He saw me and his eyes lit up.

"Agent Rex?" His voice was whiny and sorta breathy, as if his mouth was full of spittle. I suppressed a shudder.

"Who the hell are you?" I said, not sure how else to respond.

"I'm Agent Six!" he proclaimed.

"No you're not," I said to the anti-Six.

"I am now, since the old one died!" he said (rather proudly), then quickly began to backpedal . "Uh, I mean… passed away?"

There was an awkward silence in which the magenta man cleared his throat several times. He kept opening his mouth to say something and deciding otherwise. It occurred to me that he looked like a fish, an ugly fleshy fish completely out of water when talking to teenagers. Guilty delight glimmered within me, and then a wave of misery overtook it. I didn't even know this man and I had already crossed him out with my virtual magic marker. Why did I always have to JUDGE. Couldn't I just accept people for who they are? Then I was annoyed with myself. I could hate whoever I wanted.

Magenta-Man interrupted my stream of consciousness. "Uh… well since we're going to be partners and everything I guess we should get to know each other? We could go out to lunch or something like that…" he said, trailing off when he saw the look on my face.

"No, I have plans to go hang out with a friend," I said, which was actually half-true. I stuffed my mp3 player in my pocket, grabbed my ever-faithful jacket from the back of my chair, and pushed past Anti-Six without another word.

And it really wasn't my fault if I already hated his guts, right?

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The textured orange ball swept lazily through the air over the cracked and faded asphalt. It also passed over the backboard and connected with the rusty brick with a depressed thud.

"Gosh, Noah, you're loosing your edge. Have you even made a single basket today?" I teased. But my blonde friend remained uncharacteristically quiet.

"Hey, can we sit down?" he finally asked.

"Sure," I said, relieved. I hadn't been making my shots either. We worked our way to the wall and sat down against it, staring up at the blue cloudless sky for a while.

"Uh… I'm really not certain how to say this," he said. He turned his head to look at me, and the open honesty on his face surprised me.

"What do you mean?"

He waited a long time before answering, working his narrow fingers under the thick black laces on his shoes. "My parents aren't exactly pleased about this whole thing. I guess they never expected people to DIE, y'know? Heheh…" he laughed nervously. I caught his eye and he looked away, licking his lips.

Something was very wrong about this. He always looked me in the eye when we talked. What was he hiding?

"Rex, they're pulling me out. We're moving out. They won't tell me where because they're afraid you'll follow me. And between you and I, it would probably be best if you don't try."

Moving? What? It hit me like a ton of bricks, knocking the air out of my lungs. And then something else occurred to me, a scrap of memory, like a piece of faded torn fabric in the corner of a room. A conversation at a Mexican restaurant…

"Wait… but you said you weren't going to tell your parents you worked for Providence, because of the confidentiality agreement…" I slowly said.

He paused, sucked in a breath, and said, "Did I? Ah… oops."

I was astounded. "Noah, are you lying?"

He stood up and jammed his fists into the pockets of his army jacket. "Sorry, I have to go. Goodbye, Rex." And he began to walk away.

"Noah?"

But he kept walking. I stood up, not sure whether to run after him or just let go. He paused at the other side of the basketball court, where the ball we always used sat. For a second he looked like he was about to pick it up, take it with him (it was his ball after all), but instead he shrugged and kicked it away.

"NOAH!" I yelled, now desperate.

But he had already turned the corner and was gone.

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It took me several hours upon getting back to providence before I realized Bobo was nowhere to be found.

I had been wandering the halls, wrapped in my own confusion, the old basketball under my arm. I had brought it with the intention of destroying it, but then I wasn't sure how to destroy a basketball. Scissors? Hammer? I could go evo on it, but that would seem overkill.

It hadn't occurred to me that something else had happened while I had been gone. I guess it had been stupid of me not to see it coming. After all, Six had been the one who convinced White to let Bobo stay with me. Why would he let him stay after Six was gone? After half an hour of searching, I went the only place I could think of: the lab.

The light from the windows normally pervaded every part of the lab, even the deepest corner. But when I walked in, the blinds (which I hadn't even know existed before then) were drawn tight. Holiday was sitting on the counter facing the door. Her mascara was smeared under her eyes, which were red and puffy. Her skin was pale, her blouse wrinkled. A wad of tissues were clasped forgotten in her hands.

"Doc?" I took a couple steps into the room.

She looked up, saw me, and sorta half-smiled. "Hello, Rex." She wiped her nose with the tissues and let them fall to the floor.

"Have you seen Bobo?"

Her smile faded. "Nobody told you?"

"Told me what?" I asked, beginning to panic.

The last voice I wanted to hear came from behind me. "The monkey is gone, Rex. It was silly of Six to keep him, since he was obviously a bad influence on you. I'm sorry, I know he was a good pet." I turned and it was Magenta-Man, standing next to the door with his short arms crossed and a smug smile on his balding skull.

I snapped right there.

"He wasn't a PET, you fat purple FUCK! He was my friend! Who the hell do you think you are?" I screamed hysterically.

His smug grin widened. "Don't use profanity, my dear. It makes people loose their respect for you."

"I DON'T WANT ANYBODY'S RESPECT! I JUST WANT MY FRIEND, MY PARTNER, AND MY FUCKING MONKEY!" And before I was aware what I was doing, my bare fist connected with his face.

"Rex!" Holiday yelled. I didn't react. I grabbed the fat man by the tie and threw him down on the ground, kicked him in his bulging stomach. _OOMPH, _he wheezed. Then Holiday's hands were gripping my arms and pulling me away. I shouted something I don't remember, but I didn't try to shake her off. Somehow I knew the fight was over.

And I had lost.

"Rex? Oh my gosh, what have you…" she trailed off as the purple man rose to his feet. One arm was pressed against his belly rolls, his tie was ripped off and crumpled on the ground, and his face was bright red. Yet there was a triumphant edge to his wheezes.

"You… have… crossed the line. I think you'll find we are… less tolerant of your escapades without… your nanny to shield you…" he said, between gasps.

I looked down, avoiding his eyes. Somehow I knew this was his revenge for me blowing him off earlier today. I saw the wad of Holiday's tissues on the ground. They were tattered, dirty, falling apart. Unraveling. Like my mind…

Anti-Six had caught his breath. "Holiday, call security. Have them take Rex to his room. His _old_ room. Solitary confinement."

"You can't do that… I have rights…" I protested, but the passion was lost from my voice and my eyes remained on the ground. The man took a few steps towards me and grabbed my chin, forcing me to look in his stupid eyes. Like a shark's, they were, just round gray balls of clay.

"You have no rights. You're an evo, and a dangerous one. The monkey has more rights than you," he said, and spit on my face. I staggered back, away from Holiday and the man, until my back hit the wall. Now there was a triangle formed of us. Holiday's eyes were full of tears again, and I wouldn't meet them.

"Call security," he said, still staring at me.

"Please…" Holiday begged.

"Or I will make sure you never see him-or the inside of Providence-again."

She looked at me for a second, but no longer, before her hand began to travel to her earpiece.

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***Stares at PC***

**Wow. That was really hard to write, emotionally. I didn't expect MagentaMan to be like that at all. Don't know where the spitting part came from. Or Noah leaving by his own choice. And the whole Bobo thing was totally unscripted. Damn, I was creative today. Oh, and sorry about the swearing. I just thought the situation deserved it.**

**Please drop a note on your way out. Have I made you cry? Scream? Eat a bannana? Say it! Say it out loud!**

**(Edward Cullen's a UNICORN!)**

**WTF? Twilight reference? GET OUT! EVIL ADD!**

**With many apologies for getting rid of more characters,**

**-Niobe**


	4. Chapter 4

**AN: I don't really like this chapter, but it's neccesary, so whatevs. At least you can't say it's boring.**

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Solitary confinement.

Sounds bad, yeah, but the name doesn't give any details. You're locked up, alone, yes, but they don't tell you how alone feels after several hours. How alone begins to take on it's own personality after you've been with it for a while.

I didn't know how long I had been sitting there in the dark. Felt like years. And it felt like seconds at the same time, y'know? It had been long enough for my butt to get sore from sitting. They threw me in this dark room all alone, with nothing to eat, nothing to look at, nothing to talk to, except the emptiness. And my clothes, but the clothes don't hold conversation well, and talking to a shoelace is a lot less dramatic than talking to nothing at all.

I was so freaking BORED.

You kinda assume that when you're in solitary confinement the only thing you have to do is keep breathing, but there's more to it than that. You have to fight yourself to stay sane, and then you have to decide if the cause was worth fighting for anyway. Insanity had it's benefits. If you don't like reality, you can just change it and skip away into whatever direction you choose, coz the sun can be setting anywhere, any time.

Maybe the point of solitary confinement wasn't staying sane, it was not ripping out your spine after a while alone. You didn't have to be insane to do that. I was sane as everybody else, and I wanted to do it right then.

_Rap, rap._

Interesting. Did the walls want to speak with me? I knocked back. Then I wondered why I knocked. How the hell would walls knock by themselves? I was confused.

_Rap, rap._

"Rex?" a hushed voice called.

Were my shoelaces talking back to me now? I didn't think so. The voice was feminine, and I thought I would know if they were girls. Wait…

"Rex?" the voice called again, louder this time.

"Yes?" I called back.

"I'm going to open the door now…"

There was a creaking noise, and a rush of light assaulted my eyes. I shrieked and shoved myself back, smacking my head on the wall. Through the spaces in my fingers, I could make out a slight figure with long hair. I slowly removed my hands from my face.

"What are you doing here?" I asked, surprised by the scratched quality of my voice.

The figure looked at me as if I were an idiot. "I'm rescuing you! What does it look like I'm doing, selling girl scout cookies?" she huffed.

"You shouldn't be here! And I don't need your help, anyway," I said, defensive and a little embarrassed. I did NOT need rescuing from my own 'side', thanks.

"Look, I know you don't want me here, but I need your help. Okay?" she said.

"Circe… I am not joining the pack, how many times do I have to say it? I work for Providence. Being held captive changes nothing, so you can shut the door right now."

Circe shrugged and the door began to inch shut.

"NOO! Wait a sec, maybe we can make a deal or something!" I yelped.

The door stopped closing. I saw a hint of a smile tug at Circe's lips. She's enjoying this, I thought. I sighed. "What do you want?"

"Run away with me." What? It had to be a trick. I studied the daylight streaming around her. It looked about noon. I prepared to make a break for it if she started to shut the door again.

"What? …Is that it?"

She shrugged and met my eyes. "Yeah. Come with me, away from Providence and the Pack and this whole deal. Van Kleiss is afraid of you, he won't come after both of us at once. And Providence…" she paused, biting her lip. "Providence is falling, Rex, can't you see? Six was the key player (besides you), and he's all gone now. You could fall with Providence, or you could come with me and get ready for the real fight to start."

Silence. She had made some good points.

"But… why should I trust you? How do I know you won't just sic the Pack on me as soon as I'm not under Providence's protection?"

She flipped her hair over her shoulder, annoyed. "Ug! Do you not SEE, Rex? I'm your only way out of Providence. And you're MY only way out of the Pack. Why should I trust YOU, huh? Do you think this is easy for me? Gosh, you can be so STUPID sometimes. I'm closing the door."

"NO! Don't close it."

* * *

"Excuse me? Sir? …Mister?" I asked the man behind the dirty green counter. He was about twenty, with spiky red hair and several piercings. He hadn't looked up from his phone yet, and we had been standing there for several minutes.

_Ding, ding. _The ring for service bell elicited no response, so I rang it again, several times, actually. _Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding- _he grabbed the little bell and tossed it against a nearby wall. Without looking up, of course.

"Do you give all your customers the same fabulous service?" I asked. Circe huffed and dropped her backpack on the ground. After "escaping" Providence (which had been easier said than done) we had gotten on some random buses for a while, figuring they couldn't track us down according to motive if we had none. When we got to a town we hadn't ever heard of before, we decided that was good for the night. Or the morning, since it was four AM. But then we couldn't find any hotels, until now.

The guy finally looked up, adjusting his nose ring. "How may I help you?" he asked sarcastically.

"We'd like a room, thanks," Circe snapped.

"Awesome," he said, obviously not finding this very awesome. "You guys really eighteen? You look about fourteen."

I quickly collected a sob story about my parents abusing me and my brother kicking my puppy. But before I could burst into tears, Circe said "Of course," and pulled out two driver's licenses. The man took them and looked at them, then shrugged.

"Whatever. One bed or two?"

"Two," Circe said.

"Whatever." He punched some buttons. I sighed and waited for him to finish.

* * *

When we got to the room, Circe refused to tell me where she got the IDs. Or, for that matter, the Visa she had used to pay for the room. A sulky silence permeated the run-down hotel room. And it was VERY run down. The beds smelled like mildew and the sliding door to the balcony needed a good deal of Windex. The walls were a dirty white floral wallpaper.

"Gullible is written on the ceiling," Circe said. She was staring fixedly at a spot on the ceiling directly above her bed. I pulled another Dorito out of the bag on my lap. The only good thing about the room was the vending machine outside.

"No it isn't," I said, without looking up. I had pulled that trick on Noah so many times. He had always looked up to check, even if we were walking outside. I smiled at the memory, but the smirk turned to a grimace when I realized Noah wouldn't be searching for the word "gullible" written in the clouds anytime soon.

"No, really, somebody spray-painted it on the ceiling above my bed," she said. I looked up. She wasn't lying. It was written in red spray paint. I sighed and lay back on my bed, crumpling up the chips bag and tossing it at the trash can under the crooked desk. Miss.

"You're awfully quiet," Circe commented.

"How do you know?" I snapped. She acted like she already knew me, and we had hardly even talked.

"I guess I just had you pegged as the loud obnoxious type," she said, turning to give me a forced smile. I didn't return it.

"I just don't understand why you came for me. You don't even seem to like me that much. And I don't like running away from Providence at all. Falling or not, at least I know that I'm fighting on their side when I'm with them."

"Of course I like you. But Rex, Providence isn't always right, don't you see? They killed people before there was a cure. They aren't that good. Van Kleiss isn't that evil. Not everything is so cut and dry."

"At least Providence's mission statement is 'save humanity' and not 'world domination," I quipped. She didn't say anything for a while.

"So you do like me?" I asked. I plastered a totally fake smile on my face and turned to look at her. She smiled back eagerly.

"Of course!"

"Bull. I've been chasing after you forever. If you wanted to be with me, you could have had so many opportunities in the past, but now you 'like' me?" I spat.

Disconcertion showed in her dark, wide, eyes. "…but I need you now. It's hard to explain, okay?"

"Pardon me if I feel like you're using me to get away from the Pack! Because that's really what it looks-"

_Rap, rap, rap. _We froze. A male voice shouted, "Providence! OPEN UP!"

"The balcony," I muttered. She grabbed the backpack and I ripped the sliding door open. We stepped outside.

Then, all hell broke loose.

There was a clattered of gunfire. The doors behind us frosted and shattered, dust and glass flying everywhere. Snipers? They had never gone that far before. Shit. I grabbed Circe and turned to go back inside. A dart on the floor caught my attention. A tranq? Of course. Take me down, not out. I pulled her inside.

"What will we do?" she shouted over the clatter.

"Stay back!" I shouted. I generated the ever-trusty Smack Hands and broke through the wall between the beds. I was expecting to find an empty room, or maybe one in use, I wasn't that picky. But instead, uniformed soldiers were standing with their weapons at ready. They immediately began firing. A dart buried itself in my shoulder and I yelped. I absorbed the Smack Hands and fell to my knees, vision blurring.

"Stand down!" One of them shouted. They pointed the guns at Circe, who was fiddling with her backpack.

"Wait!" she shouted, and pulled out a gun. I felt an instant of surprise, then wondered what I'd expected. A care bear? Chewing gum? Makeup? I heard a click as she loaded the gun. The soldiers stood frozen. I wondered why. It wasn't like her little gun was going to do any good against theirs'.

Then I felt something metal press against my head.

"Take one step and I blow his brains out."

And everything faded away as the tranquilizer took effect.

* * *

**AN: EVIL CLIFFIE! But I don't like Circe that much. She took my Rex :(**

**Please review. I need/want your input.**

**And vote on my poll! Even though it won't change my mind whatsoever. Is that a word? If it is, did I spell it right?**

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**-Niobe**


	5. Chapter 5

**AN: Okay, I know this is a little late, but I can explain. No, really. It was actually finished ontime, I just couldn't post it, because I hadn't realized that the place I went on vacation DIDN'T HAVE INTERNET.**

**Arrg.**

**But anyway, here's chapter 5. It's really long. And a little strange.**

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"I don't like this," I said again.

Circe threw her hands in the air in exasperation. We had been standing on the street corner arguing for several minutes. The dirty city air whipped past our faces, and cars rushed by and spattered grit on our shoes. But I refused go anywhere until Circe told me what the HELL was going on. I didn't like passing out while my (only? Are none left now?) friend held a gun to my head, and waking up in somebody else's bed. A "friend's" bed. That friend had been a short, leathery man organizing packets of what totally looked like cocaine on the coffee table. And then she wouldn't tell me anything. Like, why she had held a gun to my head, for instance. Or what she said to them that made them go away after I passed out.

"REX! I told you, he was a friend I made before I went to the Pack! It's no big deal!" she spat.

"I'm sorry, I want to know whose BED I SLEPT IN LAST NIGHT! And where did you get that money? And where are we going?" I asked.

Circe stomped her foot and pouted. Several pedestrian cast us mistrustful glances as they passed. I didn't blame them, we were both a mess. Ripped clothes, dirty matted hair, desperate fugitive looks in our eyes. We sorta smelled, too, both of us could use a good shower. I tried to ignore the people the best I could, but it still bothered me that they dismissed us so quickly.

"I told you, we're going to the people I made arrangements with before, you have to trust me now-"

"Trust you? You held a GUN TO MY HEAD AND YOU WANT ME TO JUST-"

"STOP SHOUTING AND LISTEN TO ME!" Circe shouted. People had gone from just looking at us to walking quickly past without making eye contact and giving us wide berth. A young girl with a shiny red backpack looked at us and started to say something. Her mother grabbed her by the arm and pulled her along, scolding.

"I can't tell you a lot of things because I'm still not sure if you're gonna bail on me," she said in a more reasonable tone, leaning into me until we were almost nose to nose. "If you tell anybody about all this, I DIE, understand? And… I really don't want to DIE. It shouldn't bother you if I don't give the details yet. I promise you, I have no loyalty to the Pack anymore."

I maintained a sullen silence, head down, hands deep in my pockets. I hated to admit, but her argument WAS perfectly reasonable. Something just didn't feel right about everything.

"Rex… please believe me," she whispered. Her eyes were full of sincerity. "Please don't back out now."

It was a little late to be second-guessing myself, especially when the doubt I felt could kill Circe.

"Well? Are you coming?" she asked after I didn't say anything for a while. When I still didn't respond, she began walking away.

And like the stupid lemming I was at heart, I followed.

* * *

The "arrangements" Circe had made turned out to be an abandoned cabin in the middle of some scraggly, underfed forest. We had met up with these two men in suits with cool, unremarkable eyes. They had stood next to a semi truck and motioned for us to get into the back. I had obliged, albeit reluctantly.

The drive was long and rocky, and we didn't say a word to each other the whole trip. It was the worst kind of awkward, the one that's boring too, so boring your brains turn to porridge or pudding or oatmeal or whatever other squishy food item you so choose. When we reached our destination, the men handed us the keys to the little cabin and drove off.

"Oooookay then," I said.

"Yeah, they were more friendly when we met," Circe explained.

"How will we get food?"

"Well, there should be enough in the cupboards to last us the first week, but after that every week they'll drop off a new package of the food."

"…what if "they" don't?"

She gave me another one of those long looks. "They will. Of course they will."

The cabin was only a little one-story, but it was plush and well-decorated. The couch and chairs were leather, the wood floors polished. Modern art hung from the walls. It had full electricity, water, and air conditioning. There was only one bedroom, and I insisted Circe take it. Not because I was trying to be gentlemanly, but because I couldn't stand the idea of sleeping in another person's bed… again. Who knows how much that person washed his/her sheets. I'd take the couch.

It was a nice place and all, but it was a little… freaky. Lights were still on all around the house, and there was a half-empty glass of water on the kitchen counter. Perhaps even more creepy, there wasn't even any signs of a struggle. Whoever had lived here seemed to have just disappeared or something, left and didn't come back.

Circe had insisted I take the first shower since I was sleeping on the couch, and that was one offer I wasn't going to refuse. I don't know how long it had been since my last, so I had been intending to take a long, hot one. This was all good until I noticed the previous owner's hairbrush in the corner of the tub. The brush was long and silver, and mats of dead blonde hair were stuck in it, still wet from the last shower.

I couldn't get out fast enough.

When I finally emerged from the bathroom in a cloud of steam, Circe was sitting in front of the TV, which showed nothing but static.

"My favorite channel," I noted. Circe laughed, and I joined her. It felt nice, sorta like it had when we first met. Then my eyes fell on a picture on the mantle. A young blonde women was smiling next to a dark-haired man with his arm around his shoulder. My own smile faded away.

Nothing would ever be the same. It wasn't a big realization, one of those quiet ones that sneak up behind strangle you.

"Yeah, I couldn't get the TV to work, the signal is dead or something," she said, still laughing, not noticing I already stopped.

"Oh…" I said, my mind far away.

"Yeah. And she," she gestured to the picture, "didn't have a computer, I guess."

"Oh… well that's… funny."

"Yeah."

"Yeah."

There was another long, awkward silence.

"I'm going to take a shower now," Circe finally said.

* * *

The first night was the worst. The couch I slept on smelled funny, and I kept expecting the Pack or Providence to break down the front door. But nobody came, and dawn saw us still alive and paranoid.

It got easier after that, I guess. I didn't stop caring about the pictures and the hairbrush and stuff, I just forgot to care. Circe never cared about it in the first place, which bothered me.

We got along okay. There was some initial friction the first two or so days, and then everything settled down into an uncomfortable truce. Circe kept trying to flirt and make up and reignite something she didn't know was long dead.

It had died with the old me, the one that wasn't hiding from his own home and still thought life was some joke and we'd all wake up laughing soon.

But Circe was different too. The Pack had changed her, perhaps without her even noticing. She was still fearless and snarky and… not like anything I've ever seen before, but she wasn't happy. Her view of morality had completely shifted too, things that made me cringe just didn't bother her. She was more desperate, you could see it in her eyes.

There was nothing to do at the cabin. No TV, no good food, just walls to talk to and toilets to endlessly flush. I was used to an active lifestyle too, and all the sitting around and lack of exercise really began to eat at me. At Providence, you could always just run away when things got boring… but I was already running away from Providence, so…

I slipped into a state of just existing and doing nothing more. Before I knew it, several days had fallen by.

* * *

A hand waved across my vision.

"Rex? Hello?" A faraway voice called.

"Leave me alone," I muttered, and shut my eyes.

Something wet splashed across my face I yelped and touched it. It was

(Blood?)

just water. I blinked several times before searching for the source of this sudden rain. Circe stood over me, an empty and dripping cup in her hand. She looked worried.

"You need to get up now," she said, firmly.

But why? I had just laid down.

"You can't just just lay on that couch for the rest of your life I don't know what's up with you anymore. You haven't gotten up in at least a day."

It couldn't have been THAT long…

Circe stared at me. "Rex… say something. Do something. Please don't just sit there, you're scaring me."

I stared back at her, emotionless. In a sudden and unexpected motion she dropped the cup and lunged at me, grapping my face in both hands. Her mouth collided with mine, full on. I didn't resist, but I didn't kiss back either. Her mouth tasted like toothpaste, probably the blonde lady's. She pulled away, looking for some reaction. When she didn't get one, she shoved me away and swore.

I looked at her, mildly confused. She ran her hands through her hair, trying to get a hold of herself, before calmly walking into the kitchen and returning with a can of Chef Boyardee and a plastic spoon. "Eat this. All of it," she insisted, shoving the can and spoon into my hands.

_Eat?_ The word floated through my brain, searching for some greater significance. When was the last time I ate? I took a bite. Then another. I suddenly realized I was hungry.

"More food came last night. It showed up on the doorstep. I'm surprised the squirrels didn't get at it," she said. A week? It had been that long? Circe kept talking. I kept listening.

Eventually, she was even able to get me off the couch.

Soon, I was up and acting like a regular human being (on the outside, anyway). Circe and my relationship developed into something else, almost without my noticing. She had finally proven she cared about me. It meant more than I tom me then I knew how to express. Several times I considered returning that one kiss, but the opportunity always passed without action.

I'm not sure when, but I began to trust her.

Too bad that, like all things in my life, would come to pass.

* * *

It was night, Van Kleiss still hadn't attacked, and Providence somehow had failed to track me down. It was weird, but I guess I should have had more trust in Circe's black market contacts. I was incredibly bored (as usual) and couldn't sleep (also quite usual). The lack of exercise and constant fear of capture made it hard to sleep normally. Most nights I could force it, but not that one. And I missed Providence. I missed Six, Noah, Bobo, and Doc. I wondered how she was holding up with MagentaMan. I wished there was some way to find out what was going on in my absence.

My eyes fell on the TV. Could I get it to work? I groped for the remote and found it, hitting random buttons until one turned out to be the power button. The shiny widescreen flipped on. White noise blared, and white shadows danced around the room. I quickly turned down the volume so I wouldn't wake Circe, who didn't have my sleeping problems. I rolled off the couch and walked across the thick carpet to the flickering monitor, put my hands on the surface. There would be handprints when I was done, but who cared if it actually worked. I closed my eyes, searching for a problem.

There was none. I tried again, but nothing was wrong with the TV. 'cept for one little thing: the little fucker was UNPLUGGED. How did Circe not check to make sure the little ATT console/box thingy was actually plugged in? Wow. She could be really stupid. I walked to the cabinet that held all the happy crappy and fiddled with it until I found the thing that was unplugged and stuck it back in. Ooooo, magical.

The display changed from the spinning popcorn static to a much more welcoming blue screen with the words "searching for signal". YES! I won! And then, even more excitingly, the blue screen was replaced by a channel. A news channel, to be exact. I considered waking Circe, but I decided not to. I sat and watched for a few minutes.

The grin slowly slipped from my face, shattering into little pieces on the floor. I got up, walked out the door and into the night, leaving the television on.

* * *

The night was black and cool. It was a new moon and the stars were distant, uncaring. Cars swooped by one after the other. It was on of those nights that made you feel small, unworthy. Or, y'know, maybe that was just me. The metal of the pay phone was cold against my cheek, but I pressed it closer, begging Holiday to answer her phone. No such luck. I slammed the phone down and shouted something at the passing cars. The words were snatched away by the wind, lost forever. With reluctance, I punched in the last number I wanted to call.

Even though it was night, he picked up on the second ring.

"Hello?"

"Hey," I said.

"Oh," I waited for him to hang up, but he didn't. "…it's you."

"…yeah."

"Rex, I can't come back, I'm sorry," Noah said.

"Please-"

"NO! Just listen. Without Providence, I actually have a LIFE, don't you see? I'm treated like a real person, not just some mindless robot. I have choices. I can do normal stuff, like, date and play sports."

"Yeah? And how's that working out for you?" I snapped. He fell silent, and I sighed into the mouthpiece. "Look Noah, I screwed up. Royally." He grunted in reply. "Have you been watching the news?"

He sighed. "Yeah. You disappeared off the face of the earth, and in the meantime, Van Kleiss took over Providence, right?"

"Something like that, yeah."

He paused. "Can't you handle it on your own? Please?" he begged.

"Absolutely not."

"That's what I thought. Damn it, Rex, I was just getting settled in. Fine. I'm coming, but I'm NOT staying, ya hear?"

* * *

Circe was waiting on the couch when I walked back in. I had considered just leaving and never coming back, but I had a creeping suspicion that she knew more about this situation then I did. When she saw me, she leapt to her feet and rushed towards me. "Where the heck have you been? And how'd you get the TV to work? What… Why…" she trailed off, seeing my expression. Her eyes dropped to the floor.

"You unplugged the TV, didn't you?" I quietly asked. Her mouth worked soundlessly, but she didn't answer. "You somehow knew this," I gestured to the TV, which was still playing, "would happen. Maybe you even helped plan for it."

Her mouth finally caught up with the rest of her. "I can explain," she said, distraught.

"Please do."

"Uh… Van Kleiss and I sorta made a deal. He would let me go if I somehow got you out of the picture. Then he would take down Providence so that he could do whatever he wanted, and you and I could…

I stared at her, aghast. "And you AGREED to this? You… used me to save yourself?"

"NO! not like that! At all. I wanted to save you. I didn't want him to hurt you. You just couldn't see that Providence was going down with or without you. I knew you'd be mad, but I thought you'd at least understand!"

"And we'd live happily ever after while the world collapsed around us-"

"He won't take over the world! He said he wouldn't! He promised!"

"Really? And you believed him? I knew Providence was going down sometime, but I didn't think you had deliberately manipulated me so it would go down faster! I bet this wouldn't even have happened if I had been there!" rubbed my eyes and tried to think straight. Circe's eyes begged me for forgiveness, but suddenly, I didn't care. I didn't feel a thing for her anymore.

"They'll kill me if you leave," she whispered.

"I know." I realized. I shrugged and turned to leave.

"DON'T YOU SEE? I GAVE UP EVERYTHING FOR YOU! THE PACK, MY-" she screamed after me. The door slammed shut, cutting her words in two.

Sometimes, it feels like I am walking on a knife-thin line between sanity and its less admirable cousin. And with every step, the blade cuts deeper until one day, I won't be able to resist.

* * *

**DUN DUN DUN. Sorry, always wanted to do that. Hope you liked, please review/subscribe/fave.**

**Next chapter will be shorter, but trust me...**

**IT WILL BE EXPLOSIVE!**

**TTYL!**

**And watch out for my new oneshot.**


	6. Chapter 6

**AN: This was done a long time ago! I just didn't want to type it up. I'm rather pleased with how it turned out. Enjoy!**

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The pizza parlor was crowded and noisy, but its food had always been worth it in the past. What little space the place had was packed with mismatched furniture. A useless array of antiques was spread from wall to wall. It was the type of place Noah and I would visit weekly. But a rather different emotion hung in the air between us that day. Or maybe it was just me.

"Oh… I had forgotten how good this place was," Noah groaned, taking another massive bite of the pizza.

But to me, it seemed quite the opposite. The pizza wasn't as good as I'd remembered. After a week of hardly eating anything, all the grease and fat was too rich. I looked down at my own piece of pizza, considered, then let it flop to the stained paper plate. No sense stuffing myself, I'd regret it later. Noah stared at the pizza on my plate for a couple seconds, but said nothing of my lack of appetite.

"So… what have you been doing for these past weeks?" he asked, falsely cheery. I gave him the scoop, pushing my straw around the ice cubes in my Coke. When I was done with my retelling of the whole Circe deal, he watched me with an unreadable expression. "That's pretty screwed up," he said. I snorted.

"What are going to do about Kleiss?" he asked.

"I'm not sure."

He slurped his soda. "You aren't sure? You dragged me all the way out here again and you aren't sure what you want me to do?"

"Well, I didn't exactly have a lot of time to plan for it, so I was hoping you'd help, but if you don't want to…" I snapped. Noah held his hands up in a defensive gesture. "Woah, I was joking. What's _with _you? You're totally acting weird."

I buried my head in my hands. "I don't know…"

"Uh… well… do you have any ideas? Anything?"

"Do YOU have any ideas? I mean, we aren't in any shape to go and storm Providence, just you and me. I considered doing it anyway, but it really wouldn't be pretty. We ain't got squat. Heck, we don't even have the MONKEY anymore." Something wet splattered on my head. Huh? Noah had dumped his Sprite on me.

"Why… What?" I spluttered.

"C'mon, snap out of it! You're acting like a little girl who got her pet unicorn stolen or… something." He frowned reflectively, considering the metaphor. He shrugged and continued. "We have to think. What do we have that he wants?"

"Me?"

"Besides us. What if we tried to trade something for Providence? Like, he gives up his hold on Providence..."

Genius.

"NO! Rex, we aren't trading you for Providence. That could go wrong on so many levels. What if he didn't play by the rules?" I pouted for a second, but then I realized something he had said made sense. A lot of sense.

"The rules… Do you know where to get explosives?" I asked.

Noah raised an eyebrow.

* * *

"I really don't know about this," Noah said, for perhaps the hundredth time.

"Trust me, it'll all turn out fine," I said, messing with the computer monitor.

"I don't think I can handle it," he continued, as if I had said nothing. "I mean, yeah, Van Kleiss is evil, but still, it's crappy to just blow him off the face of the planet when he thinks we're making a hostage exchange."

"It wouldn't be a hostage exchange, I'm nobody's hostage-"

"But he's still human if he's evil," he kept talking, lost in his own world.

"He isn't human, he's an evo," I interjected. That got him out of his head. He blinked his sleepy blue eyes at me, trying to make some connection just beyond his intelligence. "Wait… you're an evo too, though. How are you any different? Why can't I just blow you up instead?" I shrugged. "I'm not bloody raving psycho?"

Noah crossed his arms. "You sure about that?"

I considered the question. "Not really. Is the detonator ready?"

He ignored me. "What about White? He's on our side! It isn't his fault your dragging him into this, he probably doesn't want to die."

"Oops. Oh well. We needed something to trade me for, it's not like he'd give up Providence for me, but White? Sure." I took the detonator from Noah. It was just a regular Sony TV remote, hooked up to the plastic explosive in the warehouse we were supposed to meet Kleiss. We were in a hotel room I had got with my fake ID down the block from the warehouse, just in case something went majorly wrong. But I didn't think it would. He'd come in with the Pack and his hostage, White. As soon as I saw his greasy face, I'd blow it off this world.

My hand tightened around the remote. I both feared and anticipated the explosion. It was our only shot.

"I really don't know about this," Noah said.

"You've mentioned."

"But what if it blows us up too?"

"C'mon Noah, we're a whole block away."

"Yeah, but what if-"

I threw my hands up in the air. "STOP IT, NOAH! You're making me nervous, I need to think right now."

He glared at me, definitely a _how dare you pull me into this _look. "You SHOULD be nervous, you're about to be a MURDERER. Oh, and I'm about to be an accomplice. Dude, let's go to jail together, we can be ROOMIES!" he said, and fell into a haughty silence.

Ah. Blissful quiet…

"I just REALLY don't know about-"

"ARRGH!"

Then, a flicker onscreen. It was him.

_Oh no oh no oh no no no_

"It's him! What… where's the freaking remote!"

"AH! It's right here! No, I don't want to touch it, future murder weapon, AAAAAH we're all GOING TO JAIL-"

"STOP SCREAMING! WHAT BUTTON DO I PRESS?"

"Play!"

"IT'S NOT THERE! THERE IS NO PLAY BU-"

"Hurry, he's leaving! He pushed White down and he's leaving, don't press it, you'll only kill White-"

"AHA!"

_BOOM!_

Silence. Except for the screaming pedestrians.

"Did I get him?" I asked. Noah stared back at me, gray-faced. "I don't think so…"

I dove for the window and looked out, scanning the rubble-filled streets for Kleiss. A gaping bite had been taken out of the warehouse, half of the sprawling gray building was demolished. Pedestrians were yelling, running in every direction. A child in a red coat was huddled behind a nearby building, its face covered. I couldn't tell if it was a girl or a boy. Then I saw them. Van Kleiss emerged from the back of the building, his hair askew, face contorted with range.

Fuck.

Then, more figures emerged from the chaos, also scanning the area. Rage and frustration consumed me, crushing me. He had agreed not to bring the Pack. But of course he had anyway, as if he would listen to ME, respect ME. Then my gaze shifted back to Kleiss. He was staring straight at me. The damn hotel room was way too close to the warehouse, he had spotted me. A wave roared in my ears as Kleiss turned to say something to Breach, and she and the rest of them came charging towards us.

I grabbed Noah's gun and tossed it at him. He fumbled and almost dropped it. "What?" I didn't answer, instead I grabbed him and burst through the sliding glass door in a desperate attempt to escape before the Pack caught up. There was no way we could take them alone. Our only chance was to run. Or, rather, fly. I formed wings and swooped through the streets, eliciting several gasps from beneath me as everybody scattered.

"Oh shit! Look out!"

Breach appeared out of nowhere, emerging from her portals in every direction. The bleeding cuts in reality flashed before my eyes, I swerved again and again. I heard shots fired, and it was a moment before I realized Noah was shooting at Breach. The bullets swept right past her, Noah was not a very good shot. Still, Breach hissed and drew back, staying still for a few crucial heartbeats. He flung the gun at her misshapen head, and I think we were both surprised when it struck home. She fell back into the portal with a surprised grunt.

But we didn't have time to celebrate. I was completely disoriented from trying to avoid her, and I was still going at full speed. Not a good combination. The brick wall before me swam into vision before I could swerve again.

CRACK

I hit it full-on. My forehead smashed against the rough bricks. Lights flickered across my vision, and we were falling in slow motion. A web of confusion choked me. What was happening? Why… the answers danced just out of grasp. We hit the ground, and suddenly Noah was shaking me. "REX! Get up, we have to go!" He slapped my check a few times. I flinched, confused.

Massive shapes were hurtling towards us, somewhat out of focus. The words "the pack" drifted across my shattered mind, stripped of their meaning. A cloying desperation followed them, but it all seemed a dream, and my limbs seemed chained to the pavement. Noah swore and grabbed my face.

"I'm so sorry, Rex. I'll come back for you. I swear," and he slunk away into the shadows.

* * *

It was dark when I came to. Running a hand over my face, I found it sticky with congealing blood. My head pounded like a metronome. I leaned forward and retched, releasing the few bites of pizza to the cold concrete floor. I felt like crap on the bottom of somebody's shoe. My eyelids were swollen and gritty, my head felt sore and too heavy for my neck. I must have knocked it pretty bad. I wondered if I had a concussion.

_You got knocked on the head and now it hurts. What do you THINK is wrong with you, appendicitis?_

I groaned and felt the walls and floor around me. Their cold surfaces seemed all too familiar. A certain anaesthetic scent pierced my nose. I felt a hysterical laugh building in my chest. I was back in the dark cell that MagentaMan had locked me in.

I would kill Kleiss. I hadn't been sure before, but now I was certain. It had to be done.

* * *

**AN: YAY! But I haven't the faintest idea where to go from here, because I lost my plot outline... It isn't quite as short as I thought it'd be, and a lot more dramatic. Well, that's it for chapter 6! I can't believe the story is so far all ready. There will probably only be one or two or three more chapters, so the story is winding up! WHATEVER WILL HAPPEN NEXT?**

**Please give your reaction in a review! I want to hear your thoughts.**


	7. AN: I'm sorry

**AN: I apologize many times, but this story will not be updated. I have struggled for so long to come up with new ideas, but I just can't take it any more. It's so hard to write a multi-chapter fic, and I think it just isn't my forte. Thank you to all who have reviewed, you make my day bright and shiny. I'm very sorry.**

**-Niobe**

* * *

Edit (APRIL 2): yeah, it would have been funnier if I'd posted it earlier in the day, but I only thought of it at 11 o'clock... hope I got some of you anyway.


	8. Chapter 7

**AN: ****AAAAAH IT'S FINALLY DONE! I got a lot less out of the way in this one than intended, but I guess I gotta save some drama for the next chapters. It's long enough and dramatic enough as is.**

**-Niobe**

* * *

_Previously:_

_I groaned and felt the walls and floor around me. Their cold surfaces seemed all too familiar. A certain anaesthetic scent pierced my nose. I felt a hysterical laugh building in my chest. I was back in the dark cell that MagentaMan had locked me in._

_I would kill Kleiss. I hadn't been sure before, but now I was certain. It had to be done._

**Chapter 7**

I continued my miserable existence in that dark cell for what I guessed to be several days. It was definitely more than one and less than seven, but it was hard to keep track of time while drifting in and out of consciousness. During this time, nobody said a word to me. The only contact with other life forms was the sight of a gloved hand shoving my food through the door, then darting back out. I spent my many hours alive in body, but with my mind drifting away on a different frequency. At first I considered trying to shove my way out the door when that hand poked into the cell, but I could see it wouldn't work. I was too dejected to generate my machines, and it was likely I wouldn't get very far…

I had almost given up hope when a face loomed out of the ceiling. You see, in Providence there are multiple hidden passages around the building. They were made for emergency situations like this, I guess, except nobody knew how to get around in them. I guess I could have tried to escape through them, but I had now idea what security was like out there, and I didn't know where the openings were and how to get around them. One day (night? Morning?) I was pondering my failure of a life when I heard a scraping noise. I looked up. I could see a light streaming from an opening in the ceiling. The crack slowly widened, saw somebody in between the ceiling of this floor and the floor of the next, trying to get into my cell.

Then a face appeared. It was a boy's, perhaps seventeen, with thick black hair cut in blocky bangs reaching down to his light blue eyes. His skin was pasty, and in the light it had a ghostly luminescence. His eyes met mine.

"Pssst…" he whispered, trying to get my attention, not knowing he already had it. "Pssst… hey, you…" the beam of a flashlight flashed directly into my eyes.

"Oww!" I hissed.

"Hey, you!"

"WHAT?" I whispered back.

The face grinned. "Will you join the resistance?"

The resistance? There was a resistance? I should have guessed as much, as if Providence would just let Kleiss take over without a fight. I felt the warm feeling of hope spreading across me like piss in a kindergartner's shorts. I guess it really shows how out of it I was, it didn't even occur to me to freak out about a head poking out of a hole in the ceiling. "Oh? How many people are in this resistance?" I asked.

"Two, if you join!" he said.

I stared at him, disgusted.

Seeing the look on my face, he quickly started to try to explain. "Well, nobody wanted to join if you weren't in it! But I bet if I told people you supported the resistance they'd want to fight too!" he stammered.

I stared at him. "Uh-huh. Who are you, exactly?"

"My name's Liam! I'm head of the resistance!" he grinned again, like being the head of a group in which you're the only member was an achievement, and then looked around my cell. "Um… can I come down? My legs are falling asleep."

"Sure?" I was a bit wary of him, but a sliver of the old me was still alive and I couldn't outright say no.

"Thanks!" Liam carefully assessed the situation, shrugged, and proceeded to wriggle his way out of the hole in my ceiling shoulders first. With a surprised squawk, he landed in a heap on top of me.

"Ow!"

"Sorry!" he said, giggling uncontrollably. "I fell!"

"Get off me!" I whacked him until he rolled off me. "And stop laughing!"

"I can't help it!" he said, and collapsed into another fit of giggles.

I looked him up and down while he wiped tears out of his eyes and tried to regulate his breathing. He was wearing the trademark black and white Providence uniform, except his was personalized with assorted rips and splotches of mud and who knows what else. His head was excessively large for the rest of his body, and standing up he might have reached a grand height of five foot two.

"Why aren't you with the others?" I asked when he had clamed himself down.

"Well, when Van Kleiss attacked we were all hanging out in the dorms, and then he hijacked the intercom system and told everybody to surrender and go out in the hallways weaponless. I didn't want to surrender, but my roomies did, and they don't like me very much because I'm kinda annoying so my vote got overruled and they went out into the hallway to surrender and I went and hid in the trapdoor under my bed I usually hide my illegal candy stash and then somehow, when they searched the room, they didn't find me," he babbled.

"So, you've just been living in the ceiling ever since."

"Yep!" he said. "So do you want to join the resistance?"

"I don't know, maybe?"

"REALLY?" he shouted, thinking maybe equaled yes. I quickly shushed him.

"MAYBE I'll join. As long as, from now on, I can call the shots," I said. I definitely did not trust this Liam kid. He looked seventeen, but he acted like a twelve-year-old, but he could be a useful tool if I used him correctly. He was, after all, probably the only member of Providence left outside a cell. Except for Noah. I remembered my friend's promise and wondered if he'd follow through. And if he did, would it be in time? I shook myself and tried to refocus. There was nothing I could do about Noah right now, all I could do was help myself. Liam was my best shot. But could I trust him?

The recent events weighed down on me like heavy chains. Circe's lies, Bobo's disappearance, Six's death… was there anybody I could trust? It seemed corruption was ingrained in humanity, and no matter how we tried it would always emerge. Nobody was free from it. Liam's face swam back into focus, and he looked hopeful that I'd agree to work with him, but now I wasn't sure. Who could I trust?

Myself. And maybe not even that.

"But I'm the leader!" Liam protested.

"Then I'm not joining," I retorted. He pondered this for a while. I pondered my own decision as well. This was a little short notice, but then again I needed to start somewhere if we wanted to get out. Did I really want to throw myself back into this mess? I'd thought I'd given up.

Yes, I decided, I did want to get back into the mess. Or maybe I didn't, but wasn't it my duty?

"I guess you can be leader…" Liam huffed.

"Good. I'm in," I said, breezily, as if I'd made my mind long ago.

"So… how do we start?" Liam asked, breaking the growing silence.

I sighed and rubbed my temples. The headache and dizziness had returned without my notice. "Well, what's the situation out there?"

"I don't know, like a Nazi concentration camp? Everybody's just waiting to be terminated," he vaguely stated.

"I need details."

"Right, of course. Well, the bulk of the people are locked in the larger rooms, like the cafeteria and the gym complexes. There isn't a lot of space, everybody is on top of one another. The guards are all evo, I suspect Kleiss made them out of Providence agents. Food is distributed at about noon through the doors and there aren't any guards in the actual rooms. Uh… and they have guards around the perimeters as a last line of defense against rescue or escape. I guess they didn't know about the passages-"

I raised my eyebrows. "Or they could see that even if I got into the system, I'd have nowhere to go from there. I mean, you can see how far you've gotten with being the ceiling ghost-"

"The ceiling ghost?"

"Yeah, the ceiling ghost ploy. It isn't working, obviously. I can tell since we're all still in this armpit." I stated drily.

Liam huffed, blowing his bangs out of his eyes for a brief moment in time. "Well, what else do you want me to do?"

"Never mind, just keep talking."

"But I'm done talking now," he said sulkily.

"Fine."

We stared each other down. I focused on his cold blue eyes, arranging my features into a formidable expression, yet it was I who broke away at the end. What was I doing? What I needed most now was an ally, seeing as all my others had died. Arguing with somebody would just make it worse. I shook myself off and tried to continue the conversation.

"So what do you think Kleiss is doing? He has to be planning something, it isn't like him to sit on something like this for so long. I would expect him to kill everybody and be done with it."

"He's going through Providence soldiers. Weeding them out. Killing the rebellious ones and keeping only those he can use," he explained, reluctant to talk to me with my bad attitude.

"You think he's like… harvesting Providence? Taking everything he can use before destroying it?" I was appalled and fascinated by the idea. If Kleiss got his hands on half the resources we had, he could destroy the world if he saw fit.

"I know so," he said. "I've seen it myself." We contemplated the situation in silence for a while, staring like moths into the flashlight. Liam began toying with it. He covered it with his hand and the room went dark.

"We need a plan," he suddenly declared. "An' I know this 'ceiling ghost' stuff isn't working, but I don't know what else to do. I'm trapped in Providence, if I try to leave I'll be found by the guards on the perimeter. So I just did the best with what I had, but nobody wanted to fight with me. I don't know what else to do." He set the small metal flashlight aside and looked me in the eyes. "What do you think we should do?"

"I don't know."

His shoulders slumped in frustration.

"No, wait…" I rubbed my eyes. C'mon Rex, think straight already. "Obviously the first step would be to unite the people. There's no sense starting a rebellion with no followers. Do you think more people will join if they know I'm with it?"

"Yes, definitely."

"Alright. Spread the word that I'm working on your side and see where that gets you," I said, proud of myself for reasoning it out.

"Okay! I'll get started right now and come back tomorrow night to tell you how it's going." He picked up the flashlight and got to his feet, stretching. Then he hesitated. "Uh… will you give me a boost up?"

* * *

Another twenty-four (or so, I had no clocks) chunk of my life drifted past. Food came. I didn't touch it. My head felt worse, and I spent the day in the corner of my cell, wallowing in self-pity.

* * *

Eventually, Liam came back. There was the same scraping noise, and again the flashlight shone directly into my eyes.

"Psst!"

"Ow! Stop DOING that!"

"Doing wha- right, sorry." The beam was directed away from my eyes. There was a scuffle, then the thunk of a human body hitting concrete. "And he sticks the landing!" came his muffled voice from my left.

"Quit fooling around," I snapped.

"Sorry."

" 's fine, I guess," I muttered.

"So I asked around and nobody believed that you were working with me. Nobody joined The Resistance- hey, we really need a better name than that, I was thinking-"

"They didn't believe you?" I asked, exasperated. Why couldn't people just cooperate? Why did they have to always question everything?

"Nope. I guess I've been a little inconsistent in the past… oh, and this one asshole told me to make him a sandwich. I mean, what the heck? So I was all-"

"He was probably hungry, don't take it personally." I hurriedly interrupted. I think Liam was happy to have a willing audience.

Liam nodded and sat in silence for several moments before saying, "We really aren't doing so well with this whole Resistance thing."

"Sh! I'm trying to think." I savored the silence while waiting for inspiration to strike. "I guess we'll have to show them, then."

Liam perked up as if he thought I had some secret weapon. "Show them what?"

"Me. Duh."

"Oh," he said, disappointed. As if I wasn't some über-awesome-cool weapon all by myself. 'cept, I wasn't doing so well in the weapon-generating department right now.

"Do you think I'd fit in those passages?"

He shined the flashlight into my eyes again, then up in down my body. "I guess. You're sorta thin, but your still built larger than me… it'll be a tight squeeze." I frowned and looked down at myself. I wasn't that thin, was I? I was. I hadn't been exactly fat in the first place, but all the running about and not eating had trimmed me down. I looked like a World War II survivor. Without a shaved head, and not Jewish.

"Good," I said, snapping myself out of my daze. "Why don't you tell everybody that you're going to show me to them tomorrow, and then we can do it once everybody is expecting. It'll be more effective if you build up the suspense." I realized I was thinking like White, trying to manipulate everybody into doing what I wanted. I shuddered. I never wanted to be like that man. He was on the right side, but only by values. His means to the end were too cruel.

Liam's teeth flashed in the dim light from the flashlight as he bobbed his head in reply. He seemed happy enough to let me take control, and my opinion of him raised a few reluctant notches. People who were willing to let others have the spotlight were few and far between in our line of work, this was an operation run by ego. "Yeah! That sounds good," he said. "I'll get on it right away." I helped him back into the ceiling.

* * *

I tried to sleep again after he left, but I couldn't escape the constraints of my body, and prison was so fucking boring. I was sick of being under somebody else's control and I wished everything was back to the way it was before Six died. But that time was long dead. The best thing would be to forget all those memories and move on, but try as I might I couldn't. It was sorta funny, I'd thought how amnesia could be an advantage. You could forget the memories that drove you insane. I desperately wished to forget everything.

* * *

I guess I must've fallen asleep at some point, because the next thing I knew somebody was slapping me awake. Startled, I randomly struck out at my assaulter. My fist hit something squishy, and the squishy thing squawked in pain and surprise.

"Ah!" Liam fell back, holding a hand over his eye. "What the heck, man?"

"What in the world were you doing?" I asked, rubbing the grime out of my eyes.

"Well, I came down and you, like, weren't moving or anything so I sorta thought you were dead… an' I panicked and tried to wake you up-"

"Wha… you don't WAKE dead people up, you-"

"Ah! I'm sorry, okay? You just looked all pale and limp and you weren't moving so I was afraid.."

The silence hung in the air between us like a bad stink. I moaned an put a head to my aching forehead as the ground seemed to tilt. Why did I have to be so damn irritable and jump down people's throats all the time? "No man, I'm sorry, I shouldn't of hit you, even if you were-"

"No, forget it," he interrupted, before I could ruin my apology. "It's time to go. The people are waiting for you." He got to his feet and made as if to leave.

"Now?"

"Yes, now, move your studly ass and let's go," he said, casually, as if he called people's asses studly all the time. I guess he might have. I gingerly rose to my feet, steadying myself on the cold gray wall. The room spun crazily and for a second I thought I'd fall back to the floor. But the sensation passed.

"Hey, you okay?" Liam asked.

"Fine," I muttered. I just hoped I wouldn't pass out on the way.

"Whatever. I'm smaller, so I'll boost you up and you can pull me up behind you," he said. It was easier said than done, but after a few failed attempts and snarky insults on my part we managed. I think we were both annoyed with the other, but trying not to show it. But we had to work together, otherwise Providence would be gone forever. Liam showed me how to crawl through the hidden tunnels in the ceilings. They were obviously not meant for fast travel, and clambering around in them was harder than I'd expected. It was tiring and sweaty work, and my head began to ache again. I tried not to think of brain hemorrhages and other depressing topics.

I was finally getting into the groove of crawling when the alarm sounded.

_BEEP BEEP! BEEP BEEP! BEEP BEEP!_

We froze. The alarm blared around us, a jumbled and angry noise. For several seconds time seemed suspended, and I tried to convince myself that it was only in my head. Then we heard the grunts and yells of what I guessed to be the evo guards. It could have been something else.

"Shit," Liam serenely said.

Who was I kidding? My absence had been discovered. We were doomed.

_BEEP BEEP! BEEP BEEP! BEEP BEEP!_

And the dreaded alarm blared on without a pause.

* * *

**AN: Sorry, another cliffie. Next up is the final epic showdown. What will happen? Will more die? Will Six come back? Will Rex die? Will this story ever end?**

**What do you think should happen? Follow the arrows.**

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	9. Chapter 8

**AN: No, I'm not dead, in fact I'm very much alive. It's been a while since my last chapter, but I haven't given up! See, the problem is no longer the writer's block. I have everything here on out planned. I'm not even going to try to hazard a guess on how long it'll take, I am always significantly and humiliatingly wrong. But welcome to the latest installment of Niobe Drives Rex Stark Raving Mad. Please enjoy, and don't throw popcorn at the screen if I piss you off.**

* * *

_Last chapter:_

_I was finally getting into the groove of crawling when the alarm sounded._

_BEEP BEEP. BEEP BEEP. BEEP BEEP._

_We froze. The alarm blared around us, a jumbled and angry noise. For several seconds time seemed suspended, and I tried to convince myself that it was only in my head. Then we heard the grunts and yells of what I guessed to be the evo guards. It could have been something else._

_"Shit," Liam serenely said._

_Who was I kidding? My absence had been discovered. We were doomed._

_BEEP BEEP. BEEP BEEP. BEEP BEEP._

_And the dreaded alarm blared on without a pause._

* * *

"What do we do?" Liam asked. In the dark I could just see his eyes, fragments of blue flickering madly as he glanced around in desperate search for a solution. "What do we do? What the fuck are we gonna do?"

"I don't know!" I hissed back, the stress overwhelming me. "You're the one who got us into this damned labyrinth!"

"Yeah, but you… gah!" He was too frustrated to finish. There was an tense silence as we struggled to overcome the urge to strangle one another. He took a deep breath, held it in his cheeks, let it out in a puff of hot air. "Okay. We need to think of a place to hide before they find us, because the first place they'll look is the ceiling."

I nodded in agreement. " That's good. But where? That place you hid before… can we-"

"No, it's too far away. We need something close and accessible. We could drop down in an empty hallway… but I don't like those chances, it's too risky…" he trailed off and began humming tunelessly.

"Shh! Stop, you're making me nervous. Is that even just a song, or are you just making a random stream of noise?"

"Sh yourself, it helps me think! Gosh."

_BEEP BEEP. BEEP BEEP. BEEP BEEP._

"Wait, what if we drop down in the midst of a herd of prisoners? They might not see us in the midst of all the chaos," I asked, when the idea occurred to me. He licked his lips and shifted around, causing the space to creak in defiance. I resisted the urge to snap at him. Arguing was counterproductive. We needed progress.

"I… I don't know! I don't know if we should drop down in a hallway, or what you said! It seems to me that the guards would notice two people emerging like ninjas from the ceiling! But what else is there to do? Should we just go for it?" he asked.

I took a deep breath. Breathe in, breathe out, and still the alarm blasted, and still my head hammered. "Ah hell, just go for it. Where's the nearest spot?"

"The cafeteria. But we'd better hurry the fuck up."

We scrambled through the narrow crawl space as fast as possible. The shuffling of our garments and our panting gasps seemed deafening in the relative silence between the screams of the siren. I wondered if they would ever shut the siren off, or if they'd just let it continue to blare until the problem was solved. Maybe it'd keep going for all eternity, echoing forever in my head. The thought made me shudder. Then, suddenly, there were yells from beneath followed by a giant static pop in the speakers. The blasts stopped, and the noisy silence rang in our ears. We both froze involuntarily. Neither dared to move for fear of accidentally revealing ourselves in the sudden quiet.

Voices beneath us that we hadn't heard before over the alarms. We looked at each other with newfound horror.

"Well, thank the lord somebody shut that racket up," somebody said. His voice filtered through the ceiling directly beneath us. "If it'd gone on for any longer, I'd-a pulled my eyeballs out. Stupid blasted noise. I'm about ready to quit. Can you believe he got away? Somebody'll get killed over this fuck-up. I'm just glad it didn't happen under my watch. You hear how he got away?"

"Yes, right through the fucking ceiling. Can you believe it?" a second voice said, followed by a gust of laughter.

"I know, right? Hell, he could be anywhere right now. Anywhere around this armpit. He could even be escaped by now."

"Haha. He could be right over our heads right now, how funny that would be."

Liam's breathe caught in his throat, but I felt insane laughter bubbling in mine. They could discover us right here and now, and how funny that'd be. Yeah. Funny.

"We could give the ceiling a good slap, see if it squirms!" Both of the guards burst out howling again. We gritted our teeth, and I dug my fingernails into the surface beneath me. But suddenly, miraculously, the garish laughter was cut short. But somehow, the silence seemed even more ominous and we didn't relax a muscle.

"What are you doing here?" a familiar voice growled.

"Oh shit," Liam muttered. I elbowed him, but I had been about to say the same thing, because Van Kleiss was standing directly beneath us.

"Erm… we were on our way to look for that escaped prisoner, that… uh…" one voice began.

"Rex," the other supplied.

"Yeah, him. We were gonna look for him, and try and catch him before he uh… got away for good this time."

"Yeah," the other voice added, rather unnecessarily.

Kleiss let them stew in their juices for a second, drawing out the awkward silence. "Well, get on it," he icily said.

"Yes, of course." And the guards scurried away. We waited for the sounds of his boot heels clicking away and leaving us but they didn't come. He remained in place.

_Click, click._ But instead of drawing away they sounded closer, uncomfortably and suspiciously close.

_Click, click. _He couldn't possibly know we were here. Right? 'course not.

_BEEP BEEP. BEEP BEEP. BEEP BEEP._

And suddenly that alarm was back. Liam and I jumped in the darkness, but the responding creak was lost in the restored noise.

"Turn the fucking thing off already!" Kleiss screeched. His boot heels stomped away. Neither of us spoke until the sirens were turned back off and we were sure he was gone.

"We should keep moving," Liam breathed. We continued our scramble to safety, dizzy with relief.

* * *

__After a breathless few minutes and a seemingly endless array of turns, Liam stopped, his hands scrabbling at something on the floor of the tunnel.

"Are we there?" I whispered.

He nodded. And focused the beam of the flashlight on a small seam. I listened carefully. Hushed voices murmured. It sounded as if a mass of people were crowded beneath us, all whispering at once. Liam got his nails hooked under the panel and started to lift it, but before it came all the way he lost his grip and it smacked back into place. We cringed at the noise.

"Careful!" I hissed. He nodded and tried again. This time he got his fingers hooked on it and lifted it up just enough for us to peek underneath. Beneath us, a crowd of prisoners were crammed into the cafeteria. The tables had been pushed against the wall to accommodate the horde, and several people were sitting or lying on them, sleeping or trying to. The rest sat or stood around. Everybody was uniformed, and the room was so stuffed with people you could hardly see the floor amid the mass of black and white.

A scrawny kid with wispy colorless hair and fair skin looked up and stared at us. Surprise crossed his face. Then curiosity. Liam held a finger to his lips and opened the panel the rest of the way. More people stopped and looked up from whatever they were doing. A hush fell across the room, but only a few people understood the cause of it. The rest looked around, confused as to why everybody else had stopped talking.

"I'm going down!" Laim announced to me, and rolled out of the opening. People's eyes widened as they realized what was happening and scuttled out of the way.

CRUNCH. He landed heavily, almost squashing the wispy-haired boy. Nobody spoke. They all stared at him in bemusement as he picked himself off the ground and checked for broken bones.

"You again?" asked a tall, tan-skinned guy perched on a table. His thick blonde hair was neat and perfect, even without a mirror to style it with or even basic hygienic supplies. "I thought I told you to fuck off." He got off the table and walked closer to my scatterbrained ally, the other prisoners making way for him.

"Yeah, well, something came up and I couldn't follow through with your orders, sir," Liam snarkily explained. "I almost got caught-"

"You're the one who started the sirens?" the tall boy asked, with visible alarm. "What the hell… You'll get us all killed."

"Well, I thought you might make an exception because-"

"What? No. Go back into the ceiling. We don't want you here," he snapped. The others murmured their endorsement. Their eyes flicked to Liam and back to one another, drunk on paranoia.

"_Because_ I have Rex. With me."

Tense silence.

"Rex?" he hesitated. "He's gone, right? He woulda shown himself by now, helped us somehow."

And I dove from the ceiling without preamble. The scrawny kid wasn't fast enough this time and ended up pinned beneath me, cursing his luck. I pulled myself to my feet and stepped off the boy I'd smashed, noticing how the people nearby stepped away. I looked the blonde guy in the eyes, struggling to ignore the sparks in my eyes and the wave in my ears as my head reminded me of its possibly volatile state.

"See! I told you, but you didn't believe me!" Squawked Liam, dancing from foot to foot with excitement.

The crowd watched me pull myself together with unease and mild confusion, uncertain of what conclusion to draw. "Ghost!" yelled a freckled redheaded boy, hefting a chair as is to chuck it at me.

"Jimmy! Put that chair down!" the blonde guy admonished. 'Jimmy' made a sulky face and reluctantly set the plastic chair back down. He turned back to me and looked me up and down doubtfully. "You Rex?"

I nodded. "Yeah."

He stared at me for a couple seconds, just long enough to make me wanna check my fly. "Heh. Maybe we have a shot at this." He shrugged. I decided not to bring to his attention that I was also concussed and with a questionable grip on my powers. "Good to see you finally, haha. I thought Liam was just fucking with us. Apparently not."

I nodded. We stared at each other for a couple seconds, with equal mistrust. "Who exactly are you?"

"My name's Anthony." He met my gaze levelly, with a bit of a challenge. Then he quickly introduced us to the other refugees, none of whom I'd seen before. The boy I'd landed on was Percy. Stupid name for a stupid kid.

"It was you who set of the alarm, though?" somebody asked.

"Yeah…" I admitted. "We needed somewhere to hide, and you guys were closest. We thought we could blend in if there were more people, too." I glanced around the room and knew that my assumption was wrong. My gaze lingered on the black and white uniforms. We'd stick out like Easter eggs. Anthony seemed to notice the problem as well, but didn't say anything.

"So they're looking for you?" a serious-looking dark-haired boy asked. I thought his name might've been Luke.

"Most likely," I said.

"We'll have a few minutes before they check here, right? I mean, why would we escape from one cell just to go in another?" speculated Liam.

Luke and Anthony exchanged a glance. Then Luke stated what we all knew. "There's no way in hell this will work. You guys aren't going to blend in when the guards check, and believe me, they will check. We need a better plan. A much better plan. And we don't have much time to waste thinking about it."

We stared at each other, disillusioned. How were we going to get out of this mess? A fresh throb of pain swelled behind my eyes.

"They could hide under the tables," Jimmy suggested, and took a step back when his proposal was met with mutters of "no," and "that's stupid". "What? It's a legit idea."

"No, it's a stupid idea. As if they aren't gonna check under the tables," snorted Luke. "There's nowhere to hide, they'll check everywhere.

"What if they go back in the ceiling, just while the people search?" asked a guy whose name was either Mike or Matt. This was met by murmurs of agreement, but Luke shot it down too.

"No, there's no way they'll get up in time, and they can't just stay up there either," he stated.

"Well, then what do you suggest?" Matt-or-Mike asked.

Luke shrugged. "I don't know." Everybody frowned and looked at each other. An idea had occurred to me, and I think Liam too, but neither of us wanted to say it. I sighed and took the bullet.

"If we can't hide, we gotta fight. Or we loose all chances we have of winning this," I said. The room fell silent, and I felt everybody's eyes burning into me. I waited for somebody to say something.

"I agree," Anthony said, and gave me a nod.

"Yes, definitely," Luke said. "There's no other option."

Liam turned to me and gave me a thumbs up. "Good idea. Yes. Genius," he muttered.

I looked to the other people in the room for their approval. Many were nodding, but fear shone in their eyes. None of us wanted this to happen yet. We knew we had to fight sometime, but now? It was too early. But the time had come, whether we were prepared or not.

"Okay. So how are we gonna do this?" Anthony asked, and the planning began.

* * *

**And still the drama unfolds. I have the rest of the story planned, so saying, "Bring Six baaaaack!" or "Kill Holiday!" or "Hey... let's just kill them all! Wouldn't that be fun?" unfortunately won't have any affect.**

**Not saying you can't still try...**

**Coz some of you have very amusing/convincing arguments.**

**Drop a note in, what do you think? Next chapter, all heck breaks loose, and we'll see (some? most? all?) of what happens when The Resistance makes their stand.**

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